Ken Cuccinelli on Technology

Focus on traffic congestion and capacity problems

To me, finding a long-term solution to our transportation needs is more than just more roads and more asphalt. It is a quality of life issue and an economic growth issue. We need a good transportation system that will allow businesses to quickly and
reliably ship their products. It will also maintain our quality of life by providing folks the opportunity to spend more time with their families and less time sitting in traffic.

We need to develop better working relationships between state and local governments to ensure those highest priority traffic congestion and capacity problems are addressed first and that we have a comprehensive approach to addressing the transportation
needs of each community. The transportation needs in Fairfax County are very different than the needs in Virginia Beach and the way to fix congestion in northern Virginia is very different than in Hampton Roads.

Net neutrality directly defies a federal court order

The Obama Federal Commission attempted to regulate the Internet by imposing so-called net neutrality regulations on Internet service providers in direct defiance of a federal court ruling.

The principle of net neutrality states that the federal government should mandate that broadband Internet service providers
(the companies that bring high-speed Internet into our homes) let all data flow at the same speed and charge all consumers the same price, regardless of how much of the Internet pipeline each consumer uses.

From a legal perspective, there was a
very big problem with what the FCC did. A federal court had already told the agency that it had absolutely no authority to regulate the Internet. But the FCC DEFIED that order and attempted to move forward with regulations anyway.

Net neutrality violates private property rights

The FCC decided in 2010 it would regulate Internet traffic by imposing open-Internet, or "net neutrality," regulations. Proponents included e-commerce companies such as Google & Netflix. They petitioned the FCC to ensure that telecommunications companies
such as Comcast & Verizon couldn't use their ownership of those networks to favor some web sites while discouraging the use of others, and ultimately discriminate to block competitors' web sites.

Net neutrality advocates failed to take into account
that ISPs owned the pipelines that got people on the Internet, which made this a private property rights issue, too. The ISPs invested billions of dollars a year to build their network pipelines and develop newer, faster technologies. Although we all
wanted an open Internet where we could freely visit any site we wanted, we needed to remember that we were using someone else's property to get there. The government couldn't just seize that property through regulation to use it how it saw fit.